For enterprises large and small, consolidation of hardware and software is increasingly vital due to reasons of accessibility, reliability, data security, cost and the administration of applications and the network itself. Managing remote users, their computing experience and their access to networks is similarly crucial. Many different types of institutions have used terminal server applications to provide a computing environment and to address these issues, despite having varied institutional and computing objectives. For instance, educational institutions deploy computer networks to allow teachers, students and staff to connect remotely, thereby allowing increased productivity, easier access to information, rapid communication and, ultimately, enhanced learning opportunities. Government agencies are perhaps more concerned with data security, which is why terminal services always have been essential to their information technology infrastructures. Thin client and network deployments have been mandated in several agencies—this allows all operations to be performed centrally, and secures and monitors information that may have been sent or received. Commercial organizations, as well, benefit from deploying terminal servers so that data transmission can be managed and controlled; for example, by requiring users to access data through smart cards and biometrics, and allowing editing and review of the data only within a secure environment, or by certain identified users. And in the case of organizations of all types there is a growing need for network users to access information via mobile or handheld devices from remote locations.
Centralized computing results in cost savings, ease of administration and enhanced security. Since almost all the processing of an application is done on a central server, companies are not forced to continuously upgrade or replace client or user hardware to keep pace with the systems requirements of modern applications. Maintenance of applications is isolated to the application server and not each individual node, also reducing administrative overhead. Servers are usually located in secure data centers, reducing the risk of physical theft. Centralized malware and audit processes also facilitate enhanced security. In addition, replacing workstations with thin clients can reduce energy consumption, environmental costs, support cost, and hardware costs.
In certain terminal server environments, however, implementing multiple independent instances of applications to satisfy the demands of remote clients leads to issues in being able to securely and synchronously update the graphical display of server output. Simply transmitting the output from certain output agents, such as via window server, for example, may lead to information being passed across user session boundaries, as the graphical data available would be that created by the most recent client session to access the application. As a result, a need exists for an improved method for updating graphical display information securely and in a timely fashion in a terminal server environment. There is also a need for an improved means to transport data from a user's session in a terminal server environment, allowing improved communications with a remote device.